She was one of the American Quaker women delegates refused admission to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840.

[3] She attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London with Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, Sarah Pugh, Abby Southwick Stephenson, Emily Winslow, and Abigail Kimber;[4] the convention's refusal to seat women abolitionists as delegates spurred Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others to organize the American women's rights movement in 1840s.

After her husband's death, she preserved important papers from his editing life, including the original manuscripts of writings by James Russell Lowell.

They had four children together; daughter Mary Otis Gay Willcox was also active in the women's suffrage movement and other causes.

[11] Her granddaughter and namesake, Elizabeth Neall Gay Pierce, was national president of the Colonial Dames of America.